Broadband drops every hour, possibly caused by realspeed

[rid1]

Hi,

I have the symmetrical Gig2 service. Over the past few weeks, I have been experiencing periodic packet drops every hour, specifically around 12 minutes past the hour. Despite having the Hub 5x in router mode, this issue persists.

Upon investigation, I noticed that I can replicate these packet drops when I run a samknows/realspeed test. It appears that realspeed is running a test against my line at these intervals. Strangely, when I initiate a download of approximately 20Mbps, the dropout does not occur.

I have tested this behavior across different devices, both via Ethernet and Wi-Fi connections. Additionally, I have set up a BQM, which clearly shows the regular drops. The absence of drops during the 20Mbps downloads further supports my suspicion that realspeed testing is causing the issue. How do I get realspeed to stop running tests against my line every hour, as it disrupts the service.

Thanks

[jpeg1]

As you are on a new service, this could very well be VM running tests. 

[Sabrina_B]

Hi @rid1 👋.

Thanks for reaching out to us, and welcome to the Community Forums. Apologies for the issues that you are having with your service. We cannot confirm if we are doing any testing in the background, can we ask are all devices disconnecting, is it at the same time and are there any changes in the lights on the hub?

Sabrina

[Cardiffman282]

Looks like the usual VM remote speed testing of the XGS-PON network to me. 

Just to add the putting green latency of the new network compared to the usual Docsis performance is very impressive. 

[rid1]

Hi. Thank you for your reply. I have tested this with and without devices attached and the behaviour is the same. There is no change on the light of the router. It does not disconnect from the Internet. The broadband becomes unstable during this period. If I am on a voip call then this is interrupted. If I work from home then my citrix connection is also interrupted. The only way that I could prevent this from occurring is to run a continuous download of 2 Mbps. This is annoying as for £90 a month I should not have to do this "workaround". I've previously had BT FTTP to my house and did not experience any issues.

Regards

[Client62]

Applying a continuous load masks a connection stability issue, that is the opposite of what one might expect.

[John_GS]

Thanks for coming back to us @rid1 

As you are on the XGS-PON service, you do have a ring-fenced team to help with any technical issues.

Please give us a call on 150 / 0345 454 1111 and we can assist further.

Best wishes.